Samplify Announces Ultrasound Reference Design

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS CONFERENCE -- Samplify Systems announced today it is providing ultrasound OEMs with a complete 64-channel ultrasound front-end reference design based on Altera's Cyclone IV FPGAs and Samplify Systems' SAM1600 ADC and IP. With low-power, high-performance and continuous-wave Doppler (CWD) processing capabilities, the solution can be used as a common front-end hardware platform for systems ranging from portable, hand-carried ultrasound up to full-featured consoles.

"Samplify has a proven ultrasound receiver design using their analog front-end SAM1600 ADC," said John Sakamoto, senior director, Application Business Units at Altera. "This collaboration highlights the combination of Samplify's ADC and Altera's Cyclone IV FPGAs into a development system that allows customers to quickly deliver new products into the marketplace with significant functionality such as 64-channels featuring continuous wave and pulse Doppler modes."

"By providing this complete reference design to OEMs, we can shorten the development time of their analog and digital front-end hardware, and enable them to focus on their core differentiating technologies," said Daniel Kreindler, director of marketing for Medical & Imaging at Samplify Systems. "Altera's Cyclone IV FPGAs are ideal for an ultrasound front-end design based on their low power, high-speed LVDS I/Os required for capturing ADC data at sample rates up to 65 Msample/sec. and support for PCI-Express x4 interface."

This complete front-end design expands upon the success of Samplify's ultrasound receiver AFE (Analog Front End) reference design by adding a complete transmit path and including Cyclone IV FPGAs for the Receive and Transmit beamforming functions. The design provides 100 mW per receive channel, the industry's lowest power consumption, while delivering up to 6 dB higher dynamic range than competing AFE solutions. Cyclone IV FPGAs have a wide range of device densities in various package options that allow OEMs to customize this reference design according to their cost/performance trade-offs. The new 64-channel reference design features CWD processing for 32 analog input channels and a single Cyclone IV GX FPGA to implement a PCI-Express x4 host interface plus three Cyclone IV E FPGAs to support beamforming implementation, making it a complete Rx/Tx ultrasound front end design with an interface to the back-end computer.

Pricing and Availability:

The reference design will be available in the third quarter of 2010. Samplify can provide full schematics, Gerber files, as well as Verilog RTL components at no charge to SAM1600 and Cyclone IV customers. Email sales@samplify.com for complete information. Samplify is exhibiting at the Embedded Systems Conference, Silicon Valley, Booth 3028, from April 26-29th at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, CA.

Additional information about Samplify can be found at www.samplify.com.